Despite Malaysia pretty economic growth over these past few months, something just doesn't seem to be right. It is almost as if the GDP growth figures were manipulated or spiced up.

Well, they weren't. Contrary to popular belief, the government does not really "jack up" economic figures. It just found clever ways to "spice up" growth figures. That is all.

Let us use last year as an example. Abdullah found out that the economic figures were not good, and it couldn't have been at a worse time. Elections were just around the corner and he didn't want the economy to appear weak.

So he did something very clever - he increased the wages of civil servants. This of course, leads to higher spending. And as we know, spending helps boost the economy.

I am not saying that civil servants do not deserve a pay rise. But the reason why they were given one couldn't be any worse. Yes, Malaysia is actually a failing economy. China and India are fast replacing Malaysia as manufacturing powerhouses. Half of Malaysia GDP figure comes from the manufacturing sector.

If oil and palm oil prices did not increase last year by a mile, Malaysia would have registered an economic growth of somewhere near 3.5%. This is a measly figure for a developing country.

By 2014, Malaysia will no longer be a net exporter of oil. In turn, this translates to losses for every sen oil prices go up.

To achieve developed status by 2020, Malaysia should have registered at least an 8% economic growth annually since 1995 (a developed country should have Purchasing Power Parity of at least RM25000, and GDP per capita should be close to PPP figures).

Right now, Malaysia has PPP of RM14700 and a GDP per capita of RM6500.

We have only done an average of 5% increase in GDP growth from 1995- 2007. So Vision 2020 will not be achieved despite what the government might claim. Furthermore, for Malaysia to move up the value chain, (I define this as a country that is able to innovate and produce high-quality products, e.g. companies such as LG, Samsung from Korea) large amounts of foreign direct investments (FDI) are needed.

To show you how low our FDI is, Malaysia has a pathetic RM7 billion of FDI annually while Singapore, a country 100 times smaller then Malaysia, has FDI of RM55 billion annually. Last year, nearly 50% of our FDI went into the Iskandar Development Region.

This, in my opinion, is a project bound to be a major failure. When Singaporeans were invited to invest, they did. But when they started to invest, our smart politicians said this would chase the malays into the jungles.

To summarise everything up:

(1) All the people tax money is being used for stupid subsidies and unnecessary mega-projects.

(3) Malaysia economic growth is now based on oil and palm oil prices. (Malaysia will soon be a net importer of oil, and palm oil prices have reached their peak, meaning it will be downhill from here on.)

(4) Malaysia is suffering from a "brain drain". No qualified professionals want to work in Malaysia anymore.

For Royal Professor Ungku Aziz to say that there was no social contract between the founding fathers of our nation, this has put a nail in the coffin on those ultra-malays who still see Ketuanan Melayu as a cornerstone for race relationships in this country.

While other matured and well-developed nations have put to rest the 'master and slave' relationship among the various races, it baffles the mind of thinking people why should such policy still remain relevant in this 21st century here in Malaysia. We might call our British colonial masters 'Sir' or 'Tuan' in the early days but after half-a-century of independence, don't you think that such thinking is out of date?

Mind you, the United States who imported Negros from Africa a few centuries ago to be the white man's slave might have a black man to be their next president if Obama wins the ticket to the White House in the coming US presidential elections.

Malay rights have been ensconced in the federal constitution and cannot be taken away unless by a two-thirds majority in parliament subject to the malay rulers approval. No one doubts that in the early days, the bumis especially the malays, needed affirmative actions to take them out of their cycle of poverty to be on par with other races, especially the Chinese.

But the NEP has outlived it purpose and it should be replaced with a new policy which will eradicate poverty regardless of creed and race.

The playing field should be more even and let the best among the best compete among themselves in order for our nation to progress in the future. Why should rich malays with their 'right political connections' obtain a big slice of the economic cake while the poor people are denied such opportunities to get them out of their cycle of poverty?

To be a respected race, the malays must discard the notion that the government will always have to provide them with opportunities in studies and business as if it was their birth right. The malays should be able to compete with the other races on an equal footing and work hard to improve their lot rather than expecting handouts from the government.

Ungku Aziz, a towering malay whose intellectual thinking is way ahead of his time, has opened a Pandora Box's with his outright statement that there is no written 'social contract' among the various races prior to independence. Umno politicians will now cry foul about his daring statement as they will always use the Ketuanan Melayu bogey to win the hearts and minds of the malays to support their cause. .

But the malays cannot be in a denial mode anymore. We must accept the fact that in the brave new world that we live in where people and capital move to places where no restrictions are imposed, the old way of doing business by having quota systems will drive capital away from our country and the people will suffer in the end if business opportunities pass our shores.

The malays should look at their Singapore brethren who are no less the worse although unlike their Malaysian cousins, they does not have any NEP policy to get a leg up in society. There is no short cut for success unless you work hard for it.

This can only happen in Bolehland. Thank heaven, I don't live in Malaysia anymore. But I pity my comrades there. Someone should assassinate Bodowi to teach Malaysian politicians a lesson. Looks like the only way out……….

The top problems in Malaysia are corruption, corruption and corruption. Get rid of corruption, you get rid of all the problems associated with it.

Corruption can be broadly defined as the misuse of public office for private gain. Abuses by government officials such as embezzlement and nepotism, as well as abuses in bribery, extortion, fraud and influence peddling.

3. Corruption in public administration results in unequal provision of services

4. Corruption in selecting or promoting officials without regard to performance will stifle progress

5. Corruption siphons off the resources needed for development

6. Corruption undermines democracy and good governance

7. Corruption undermines democratic values in tolerance and trust

8. Corruption undermines the legitimacy of government

9. Corruption undermines national economic development

10. Corruption weakens government institutions by disregarding official procedures

Corruption generates economic distortions in public sector by pulling investment from essential projects such as education, health care and low cost housing into projects where bribes and kickbacks are more plentiful.

Corruption lowers compliance with construction, environment, or other regulations.

Quality of government services are reduced due to inefficiency as the result of corruption, thus budgetary pressures on government increases and ultimately, the citizens foot the bill and are denied the share of the national resources as well.

In the public sector, corruption undermines economic development. In private sector, corruption increases the cost of business and stifles healthy competition.

Corruption shield companies with connections from fair competition, thus making our country less efficient and less competitive in the global market.

The most important asset of a country is not its natural resources, but rather its human resources. This is especially true in a knowledge-based economy, which of course, will be the trend in the future if not already the trend in most of the western countries.

My daughter, who is in her final year medicine in Auckland, told me that a team of Singapore recruitment officers have just visited Auckland and talked to the Malaysian students there, offering jobs and training prospects for the final year students once they graduate.

My daughter also told me that over the last few years, quite a lot of her Malaysian seniors, after graduating from medical courses in New Zealand, have gone to Singapore to work as house officers and subsequently stayed back in Singapore for their postgraduate training. Similar teams are sent to UK and Australia for recruiting Malaysians there to work in Singapore.

About a year ago, Reuters reported: 'Malaysia is counting on bright, ambitious people like Tan Chye Ling for its future, to lead it away from manufacturing and into the knowledge age.'

But the 32-year-old scientist, a postgraduate in molecular biology, is not counting on Malaysia to look after her future.

'I felt very suppressed in Malaysia,' said Tan, who moved to neighbouring Singapore, the region's pacesetter for biotech investment, after a decade of study and research in Malaysia.

'I have benefited from the better research environment and salary scheme here. Things are much smoother,' she said by phone from the National University of Singapore where she is studying dust mites and allergies. Tan estimates that 60 percent of the research teams she works with in Singapore are from Malaysia, despite her country's efforts over several years to develop a biotech industry.

There is a serious problem facing Malaysia and that is the problem of 'brain drain'. Why are Malaysians overseas not coming back to work? Well, pay may be part of the reasons but it is not the main reason. Singapore recruitment teams offer Malaysian medical students a salary which is a few times what they would expect to get in Malaysia S$40000 a year for houseman after tax (equivalent to RM86000) which is about five times the pay of a houseman in Malaysia.

But, as I say, pay is not the main problem. The living expense overseas is high. And for a person working overseas, the loneliness and the stress level is also high. So not everyone opts to work overseas because of the pay. Many would not mind to work for a lesser pay if they can stay near to their loved ones. So why do people choose to work overseas, away from their loved ones?

Malaysia has many state-of-the-arts hospitals and research centres, which may even be the envy of many overseas countries. But hardware alone would not attract these experts to come home. In the medical field, I have so many friends/classmates working overseas, many in world-renowned centres. Why do they do that? Some of my friends and classmates did come back as specialists. After working a few years (many only lasted a few months), most got disillusioned and went off again.

There is really not much prospect of career advancement here. How many can hope to become a professor even when they are an acknowledged expert in their field? On the other hands, lesser beings are being promoted to professorship for doing much less. How many of them can have a say about how things are to be run? How many of them can blend into the local team where the work attitude is vastly different from that overseas?

There is an unwritten rule that even if the person is very good, the head of the team has to be someone from a certain ethnic group who may not be even half as good as him. In everyday life, some become disillusioned with the corruption, the red tape and the 'tidak apa' attitude of officialdom. For an overseas doctor applying to work back home, the application can take up to six months to get approved, whereas Singapore sends teams overseas to recruit them on the spot and offering them jobs immediately as long as they pass their final examinations. See the difference?

It is the sense of being wanted and being appreciated that make these people stay overseas. Back here, they are often made to feel that they are of a lower class. They do not feel wanted and they do not feel appreciated. That is the main reason.

For those with children, the education system further puts them off. Even school children can feel being discriminated against and one glaring example is the two system pre-university education.

All these make them pack their bags and off they go again, leaving behind their parents, perhaps their siblings, the friends they grew up together with and their favourite food that is often not available overseas. No one likes to be away from home but circumstances and a sense of being recognised for their worth make them go away. It is really sad.

Parents spend big sums of money on educating their children but the ones who benefit most are the Singaporeans, the British, the Australians, the Americans and so on. As long as race politics is not done away with, this problem of 'brain drain' will continue and Malaysia will always trail behind the advanced countries no matter how many Twin Towers and Putrajaya we build.

Saving Resources to Save Growthby Jeffrey D. Sachs NEW YORK – Reconciling global economic growth, especially in developing countries, with the intensifying constraints on global supplies of energy, food, land, and water is the great question of our time. Commodity prices are soaring worldwide, not only for headline items like food and energy, but for metals, arable land, fresh water, and other crucial inputs to growth, because increased demand is pushing up against limited global supplies. Worldwide economic growth is already slowing under the pressures of $135-per-barrel oil and grain prices that have more than doubled in the past year.

A new global growth strategy is needed to maintain global economic progress. The basic issue is that the world economy is now so large that it is hitting against limits never before experienced. There are 6.7 billion people, and the population continues to rise by around 75 million per year, notably in the world’s poorest countries. Annual output per person, adjusted for price levels in different parts of the world, averages around $10,000, implying total output of around $67 trillion.

There is, of course, an enormous gap between rich countries, at roughly $40,000 per person, and the poorest, at $1,000 per person or less. But many poor countries, most famously China and India, have achieved extraordinary economic growth in recent years by harnessing cutting-edge technologies. As a result, the world economy has been growing at around 5% per year in recent years. At that rate, the world economy would double in size in 14 years.

This is possible, however, only if the key growth inputs remain in ample supply, and if human-made climate change is counteracted. If the supply of vital inputs is constrained or the climate destabilized, prices will rise sharply, industrial production and consumer spending will fall, and world economic growth will slow, perhaps sharply.

Many free-market ideologues ridicule the idea that natural resource constraints will now cause a significant slowdown in global growth. They say that fears of “running out of resources,” notably food and energy, have been with us for 200 years, and we never succumbed. Indeed, output has continued to rise much faster than population.

This view has some truth. Better technologies have allowed the world economy to continue to grow despite tough resource constraints in the past. But simplistic free-market optimism is misplaced for at least four reasons.

First, history has already shown how resource constraints can hinder global economic growth. After the upward jump in energy prices in 1973, annual global growth fell from roughly 5% between 1960 and 1973 to around 3% between 1973 and 1989.

Second, the world economy is vastly larger than in the past, so that demand for key commodities and energy inputs is also vastly larger.

Third, we have already used up many of the low-cost options that were once available. Low-cost oil is rapidly being depleted. The same is true for ground water. Land is also increasingly scarce.

Finally, our past technological triumphs did not actually conserve natural resources, but instead enabled humanity to mine and use these resources at a lower overall cost, thereby hastening their depletion.

Looking ahead, the world economy will need to introduce alternative technologies that conserve energy, water, and land, or that enable us to use new forms of renewable energy (such as solar and wind power) at much lower cost than today. Many such technologies exist, and even better technologies can be developed. One key problem is that the alternative technologies are often more expensive than the resource-depleting technologies now in use.

For example, farmers around the world could reduce their water use dramatically by switching from conventional irrigation to drip irrigation, which uses a series of tubes to deliver water directly to each plant while preserving or raising crop yields. Yet the investment in drip irrigation is generally more expensive than less-efficient irrigation methods. Poor farmers may lack the capital to invest in it, or may lack the incentive to do so if water is taken directly from publicly available sources or if the government is subsidizing its use.

Similar examples abound. With greater investments, it will be possible to raise farm yields, lower energy use to heat and cool buildings, achieve greater fuel efficiency for cars, and more. With new investments in research and development, still further improvements in technologies can be achieved. Yet investments in new resource-saving technologies are not being made at a sufficient scale, because market signals don’t give the right incentives, and because governments are not yet cooperating adequately to develop and spread their use.

If we continue on our current course – leaving fate to the markets, and leaving governments to compete with each other over scarce oil and food – global growth will slow under the pressures of resource constraints. But if the world cooperates on the research, development, demonstration, and diffusion of resource-saving technologies and renewable energy sources, we will be able to continue to achieve rapid economic progress.

A good place to start would be the climate-change negotiations, now underway. The rich world should commit to financing a massive program of technology development – renewable energy, fuel-efficient cars, and green buildings – and to a program of technology transfer to developing countries. Such a commitment would also give crucial confidence to poor countries that climate-change control will not become a barrier to long-term economic development.

Jeffrey Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

to all surfers...dont talk about racist here. what in this blog try to figure out is the misbehave of our politician and what the exact of politics scenario in the UMNO itself. it not about what malays got and what other races lost. if we look in this UMNO cartel game, the most effect group is malays. many contractors thrown into losses, or maybe near to bankrupt. because of why? because of the cartel government slaves his own supportes. melayu sendri sembelih melayu. i dont think other races is well effected with the economic changes in Malaysia. maybe just a little group would be. if we look deeper, how many kancil car is on auction? hundreds every month. even it's the cheapest and affordable car in Malaysia. because of why? because of not many malays afford to sustained the installment because of the limit of the income. dont even compare what had happen in other countries. because the political scenario is different from Malaysia. So, dont play the sentiments of races. We dont want any 13 mei tragedy happen again. It is not the matter who is rulling, but it is about peace, a good leadership among minister, a good economics weather and the most important thing is, a good place to stay. Try to figure out how to make those stupid minister step down and being replace with someone who is more capable to rulling this country.

This new story will give me another puzzling questions... is there any truth in it? The last time we heard about the case, the judges believe that it can happen but the only thing is that the evidence is not concrete enough to put it beyond reasonable doubt...

Maybe the new story will become more puzzling .... can a 60 year old grandfather really force and sodomize a 23 year (old) young guy?